The study explains that the brain wages a hidden battle during deep sleep to control the neural activity that causes tinnitus.
Tinnitus is defined as the annoying sound a person hears in their ears without any apparent source. Statistics indicate that this problem affects 15% of the world's population, particularly the elderly. Despite its widespread prevalence, tinnitus remained for many years one of the mysterious ailments for which medicine had yet to find a definitive cure.
In 2022, a scientific breakthrough was achieved when a research team led by Professor Linus Milinski discovered that spontaneous brain waves during deep sleep inhibit the neural activity responsible for tinnitus.
Milinski described this discovery as "a paradigm shift in understanding tinnitus," emphasizing that it "puts sleep at the heart of the therapeutic equation."
To confirm these findings, researchers conducted a series of experiments on ferrets, animals with a similar auditory structure to humans. The results, published in 2024, revealed a direct link between tinnitus severity and sleep disturbances, showing that sleep problems appeared concurrently with an increase in tinnitus intensity, particularly after exposure to noise.
Most interestingly, experiments have shown that deep sleep suppresses the brain mechanisms that cause tinnitus, with researchers noting a significant decrease in excessive brain activity during non-REM sleep phases.
These findings were further corroborated by a Chinese study this year, which showed that tinnitus sufferers have difficulty suppressing excessive brain activity during the transition to sleep. Interestingly, deep sleep effectively inhibited this activity.
Professor Milinski warns of what he calls the "vicious cycle" created by the link between tinnitus and sleep disturbances, noting that "tinnitus leads to poor sleep, and poor sleep worsens tinnitus." However, he believes this cycle can be broken, explaining that "lack of quality sleep increases the body's sensitivity to stress, which is itself one of the most significant triggers for tinnitus."
Researchers at Oxford are currently studying how sleep affects the development of tinnitus itself, in a scientific endeavor that may not only lead to a cure for this intractable condition, but may also reveal some of the secrets of sleep that still puzzle the scientific community.
Researchers confirm that improving sleep quality has become a crucial therapeutic goal for breaking the cycle of tinnitus, opening new horizons of hope for millions of patients.
